philippdubach

AI Capex Arms Race: Who Blinks First? Alphabet

Big tech's AI spending spree is projected to consume 94% of operating cash flow minus dividends and buybacks. At what revenue growth rate does this pay for itself?

http://philippdubach.com/posts/ai-capex-arms-race-who-blinks-first/

93% of Developers Use AI Coding Tools. Productivity Hasn't Moved. METR found experienced developers 19% slower with AI, despite feeling 20% faster. At 92.6% adoption, organizational productivity gains remain roughly 10%.

Worth reading: a study of 16 experienced developers found AI coding tools made them 19% slower, despite their own perception of being 20% faster.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/93-of-developers-use-ai-coding-tools.-productivity-hasnt-moved./

Peter Thiel's Physics Department Peter Thiel says physics stalled in 1972. Then GPT-5.2 proved a new result in theoretical physics. The 75:1 AI compute gap between commerce and science.

Worth reading: Peter Thiel's stagnation thesis, that progress in the physical world has stalled since the 1970s, got a boost from an unlikely source - AI proving a long-standing problem in theoretical physics.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/peter-thiels-physics-department/

When AI Labs Become Defense Contractors The Anthropic-Pentagon standoff isn

Worth reading: How quickly AI labs can become defense contractors, and the financial gravity that shifts their priorities.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/when-ai-labs-become-defense-contractors/

When Every Bulge Bracket Bank Agrees on AI I read 12 AI research reports from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, UBS, and 6 other banks. Here

Worth reading: big banks agree AI is a general-purpose tech like electrification, but quietly diverge on forecasts, with estimates ranging from +0.7% to +10-15% impact on productivity.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/when-every-bulge-bracket-bank-agrees-on-ai/

People Live in Levels, Not Rates Prices rose 25% since 2020 and won

Jon Stewart's interview with Richard Thaler highlighted a disconnect between economics and societal well-being, with Stewart surprisingly stumbling into a standard economic solution while trying to reject it.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/people-live-in-levels-not-rates/

The Absolute Insider Mess of Prediction Markets A Google insider made $1.15M on Polymarket in 24 hours. Israeli soldiers bet classified strike timing. Why prediction markets need insider trading regulation.

Someone close to Google made $1.15 million in under 24 hours on Polymarket, a prediction market, by betting on 23 Google-related outcomes and getting 22 right. The regulatory response so far has been zero.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of-prediction-markets/

Novo Was Europe's Most Valuable Company Novo Nordisk lost 75% since June 2024. CagriSema failed vs Zepbound, US pricing is resetting lower, and Lilly leads on every axis. Full breakdown with numbers.

Novo Nordisk lost 75% of its value since June 2024, falling from Europe's most valuable company to behind 10 others, after a key drug trial failed and US pricing pressures mounted.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/novo-was-europes-most-valuable-company/

Super Bowl Ad Economics 2026: The $8M Prisoner's Dilemma A 30-second Super Bowl spot costs $8M. The real price is $16–23M. The ROI evidence is mixed. A deep look at the pricing, the prisoner's dilemma, and the NFL.

The economics of a Super Bowl ad, costs and viewership.

philippdubach.com/posts/the-ec...

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The Impossible Backhand AI converges to the mean by design. On Humanity

AI generated content hits a ceiling due to convergence to the mean, a structural limitation.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-impossible-backhand/

Europe's $24 Trillion Payment Breakup Is Really a Bet on Infrastructure Arbitrage The EuroPA alliance connected 130 million users across 13 countries overnight. But this isn

Europe's payment initiative is a bet on infrastructure arbitrage, not just a breakup with Visa and Mastercard.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/europes-24-trillion-payment-breakup-is-really-a-bet-on-infrastructure-arbitrage/

Your Manager Is Not the Problem 71% of executives have witnessed managers sabotaging talented employees. Harvard research shows status threat, not money, is the primary driver, and subjective evaluation discretion nearly doubles sabotage rates. The problem is incentive design, not character.

New research suggests badly designed systems, not bad managers, cause sabotage in the workplace.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/your-manager-is-not-the-problem/

The Long Volatility Premium One River

The Long Volatility Premium challenges conventional wisdom on buying puts as a losing game.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-long-volatility-premium/

The SaaSpocalypse Paradox The market is simultaneously pricing AI capex failure and AI destroying all software. Both cannot be true. A data-driven analysis of the February 2026 enterprise software sell-off, the hyperscaler sustainability question, and why Goldman Sachs, a16z, and the All-In pod see a 20x TAM expansion where the market sees extinction.

The SaaSpocalypse paradox, where markets simultaneously price AI failure and destruction of software, cannot hold true.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-saaspocalypse-paradox/

Don't Go Monolithic; The Agent Stack Is Stratifying The enterprise AI agent stack is stratifying into six layers with different winners at each. Models commoditize; context — your organizational world model — compounds. A framework for agentic AI architecture decisions.

Enterprise AI agent stack is stratifying into layers with different winners at each level.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/dont-go-monolithic-the-agent-stack-is-stratifying/

Where Mobile Money Goes Now Apps beat games in mobile revenue for the first time in 2025. GenAI led the charge with $3.5B in growth. Eight charts show who controls the app economy.

Non-game mobile apps now generate more revenue than games, led by AI and subscriptions.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/where-mobile-money-goes-now/

The Variance Tax Variance drain is the hidden cost of volatility: why a portfolio averaging +10% can lose money. The ½σ² formula explains the gap between paper and real returns.

The variance tax reduces investment returns due to volatility, calculated as half the variance of returns.

philippdubach.com/posts/the-va...

Claude Opus 4.6: Anthropic's New Flagship AI Model for Agentic Coding Claude Opus 4.6 brings a 1M token context window, 68.8% ARC-AGI-2, and Agent Teams to Claude Code. Full benchmark comparison vs GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro with pricing analysis.

Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.6, its new flagship AI model for agentic coding.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/claude-opus-4.6-anthropics-new-flagship-ai-model-for-agentic-coding/

Buying the Haystack Might Not Work This Year a16z sees AI fundamentals thriving with 80% GPU utilization. AQR sees the CAPE at the 96th percentile. Both have data. Both may be right.

Andreessen Horowitz and AQR reports on the market offer conflicting views.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/buying-the-haystack-might-not-work-this-year/

Bandits and Agents: Netflix and Spotify Recommender Stacks in 2026 LLMs promised to transform recommendations, but inference costs created a bifurcation. How Netflix and Spotify balance accuracy against economics in 2026.

LLMs promised to transform recommendations, but inference costs created a bifurcation. A closer look at how Netflix and Spotify balance accuracy against economics in 2026.

philippdubach.com/posts/bandit...

Is Private Equity Just Beta With a Lockup? AQR

A new study suggests private equity may offer little more than public market returns with added lockup risk.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/is-private-equity-just-beta-with-a-lockup/

Britain's Strategic Limbo The UK is the country with no bloc. At Davos, Britain refused to join Trump's Board of Peace , citing commitment to international law and rejection of the…

"Global Britain" was the slogan after Brexit, a vision of nimble bilateral relationships unconstrained by Brussels bureaucracy. In reality global influence requires either hard power or bloc membership. Yet, the UK is the country with no bloc.

notes.philippdubach.com/0016

The Most Expensive Assumption in AI Sara Hooker

A paper challenges the assumption that bigger is better in AI, citing cases where smaller models outperform larger ones.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-most-expensive-assumption-in-ai/

Repo might be even bigger than we thought Note #0012 by Philipp D. Dubach

Just published another note on the size of the U.S. repo market and the $12.6 trillion in average daily exposures.

notes.philippdubach.com/0012

Against All Odds: The Mathematics of 'Provably Fair' Casino Games Statistical analysis of 20,000 crash game rounds reveals if provably fair gambling systems match theoretical RTP claims. Empirical verification and Monte Carlo simulations.

Mathematics behind "provably fair" casino games, specifically crash games, analyzed for fairness and strategy-proofing.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/against-all-odds-the-mathematics-of-provably-fair-casino-games/

Usually this is my automated account - I'm just breaking this rule bc this is such a cool implementation, thanks for sharing!

Enterprise AI Strategy is Backwards 85% of AI projects fail to reach production. New data reveals why enterprise AI strategy is backwards and what winners do differently.

Enterprise AI strategy is often backwards, claims Reid Hoffman.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/enterprise-ai-strategy-is-backwards/

Does AI mean the demand on labor goes up? Note #0005 by Philipp D. Dubach

Read my Note: Does AI mean the demand on labor goes up?
notes.philippdubach.com/0005

Ozempic is Reshaping the Fast Food Industry New Cornell research shows GLP-1 users cut grocery spending 5.3% and fast food 8.0%. With 16% household adoption, food stocks face headwinds.

Ozempic is reshaping the fast food industry, with users cutting grocery spending by 5.3% within six months.

https://philippdubach.com/posts/ozempic-is-reshaping-the-fast-food-industry/